As marketers become more reliant on their tech stack to ensure efficiency, help them be data-led, and take over some of the heavy-lifting and repetitive day-to-day tasks, the choice of available marketing providers has skyrocketed.

When it started out in 2011 there were a casual 150 providers on it - a figure that has ballooned to nearly 7000 this year.

As a marketer, the prospect of keeping track of this burgeoning landscape of solutions may be giving you palpitations. Instead of grabbing your magnifying glass to check out the endless possibilities in the infographic above, how about hearing us out on something we think is going to be big in the future of martech: verticalisation.

In an ideal world, every person who visited your online store would become a customer.

Anyone who hit your homepage would find something on your site they couldn’t possibly leave without buying, and you could go home each night and dream happy dreams about 100% conversion rates and how brilliant you are at ecommerce. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Of course, we know that in reality the real world can be a cruel and unforgiving place, and most people who wind up on your website (around 98%) won’t flash the cash and make a purchase.

But don’t pack up and go home quite yet! In the game of customer acquisition and activation, there are a number of clever tactics that you employ, so keep reading.

Customer loyalty: every retailer knows it’s essential to successful, sustainable retail, and the sign of a great brand experience that shoppers can align with.

The Pareto principle notes that 80% of your revenue will come from the top 20% of your loyalest customers - do you know who yours are? And if you do, how do you recognise and reward them?

Recognising the loyalty of your customers is essential for their overall experience. Our soon to be published consumer research found that 62% of female and 57% of male customers felt ‘bothered’ if their loyalty was not recognised by retailers.

You walk into the wedding party of a close friend; you know that you’re going to have to speak with people, so you get ready.

Some of the guests are close friends, some you’ve met once or twice before and a few you have never met. Imagine if you were to walk up to one of your oldest and dearest friends and formally introduce yourself as though they were a stranger. Or go to a guest you have met for the very first time and, without any introduction, proceed to launch into the gory details of a particularly unpleasant bout of food poisoning you’d just experienced - chances are they’ll be avoiding you for the rest of the nuptials.

The way you greet each of the guests will differ, because the relationship differs - it’s all about context.

From cart abandonment to welcome campaigns, customers are becoming more accustomed to receiving automated messages from retailers as they work through their online shopping journey.

But as the likes of Uber and Deliveroo continue to push the boundaries of offering tailored and personalised customer experiences, the finer details of those expectations are slowly but surely growing. Simple automation is no longer enough; if retailers don’t want to be left behind it is essential that they advance their execution to meet customer-first campaign standards.

According to our own research, 46% of consumers would “consider not shopping again with a company if they keep sending them marketing emails with products they’re not interested in or aren’t tailored for them. The keyword here is tailored. Do the automated messages feel relevant? Are they reflective of a customer’s buying habits, or do they seem generic? In order to stand out you need to take your automation strategy a step further.